BloodyIron on Linux Gaming - YouTube

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BloodyIron

2[H]4U
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Jul 11, 2005
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Hi Folks,

By now, you may have seen this:



And I'm sure some of you might have felt like this:

3xp5pbggrpb11.png



Well, I'm BloodyIron, and I'm now working on something I've been mulling over for like 2 years.

I'm going to start a YouTube series, as part of a channel of mine (which does not yet have content), that will show how actually easy gaming on Linux is. Not only the performance one can see real-world, but also the actually easy steps to get up and running from scratch.

I watched the LTT/Wendell video, and omfg it was pain.

So, I think I can do a better job, and I'm setting out on that quest.

This may be my channel (no real content yet) : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuAy4xQ4CCktPwTyaCtQuNw?view_as=subscriber


But Bloodyiron, why make a forum post about this?

Well, you see. Since mentioning that I want to do this. I have received quite a lot of positive response (thanks btw peeps! <3). So I started this thread to centralise more of the discussion, until I get my shit together, content up, and a site built.

So with this thread, I was hoping to hear what kind of stuff you would like to see, for Linux Gaming. And if you have questions along the way, just ask, and I'll help you out where I can.

Honestly. I've been gaming exclusively on Linux for over 2 years now. It's really awesome. And I want to show the world how actually fun it is. Because I'm not going back to Windows on my gaming rig. And maybe you'll find something you like too. :)

Come join me for the ride.

UPDATE:

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, START YOUR ENGINES!:

 
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I for one don't care about Linux gaming but hope you can do a better job then Wendell did. That video proabably turned more people away from Linux gaming.
 
Yeah, it most definitely is not helping. Ugh. I want to do a much better job, and I'm going to bust my ass to try to do that.

Any particular thoughts you want me to look out for btw?

vegeta535 said:
I for one don't care about Linux gaming but hope you can do a better job then Wendell did. That video proabably turned more people away from Linux gaming.
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Good luck! There's actually a fair amount of YT content on Linux gaming but there's always room for improvement and different angles. It's not so much that gaming on Linux is difficult, it's the lack of native content.
 
BloodyIron said:
Yeah, it most definitely is not helping. Ugh. I want to do a much better job, and I'm going to bust my ass to try to do that.

Any particular thoughts you want me to look out for btw?
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I don't know anything about Linux gaming so I can't help. From the Linus video it look too complicated for the common user. Requiring too many steps and having to visit multiple sites. Idk how you can stream line the process.
 
I've already seen plenty of it, and I don't like the quality of it. I think I can do a substantially better job. But let's see if I can actually do that in practice ;P

heatlesssun said:
Good luck! There's actually a fair amount of YT content on Linux gaming but there's always room for improvement and different angles. It's not so much that gaming on Linux is difficult, it's the lack of native content.
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It's all in presentation. They really didn't consider the audience when trying to show how it's done, and that's what I want to do differently.

It's not just that I know how to present the info better, it's also that I live it. Since I do Linux Gaming literally every day, and have done for years, I am effectively a Subject Matter Expert. I can take that experience, and I am confident I can present it in much more useful ways. Not just streamlined, but in ways that make far more sense, and cut out more bullshit that people don't really care about.

Also, one of the methods I was thinking of doing, was making "peripheral" videos, where you can click on a link to go to, for further explanation. So in the main video I talk briefly about it, have an overlay for further explanation in another video, but in the main video, we just keep moving along, instead of getting into an expanded explanation. And if people want that expanded explanation, they have the choice to see it, and know where to find it.

How's that sound so far? :)

vegeta535 said:
I don't know anything about Linux gaming so I can't help. From the Linus video it look too complicated for the common user. Requiring too many steps and having to visit multiple sites. Idk how you can stream line the process.
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The TF2 ones were not, that's old irrelevant rando shit that the game needed a place to put them, so I stuffed them there, hah!

But TF2 runs that well on Linux, so... they could have, but I know they didn't.

Thanks for the sub! I want real content to be on there soon ;P

painintheworld said:
Were the game clips on your channel running in Linux?

Subbed, by the way.
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I'm pretty familiar with linux, and that was mind-boggling for me. WTF was he talking about?

Maybe start from scratch and assume zero knowledge. If you use terms or acronyms, talk about what they are, like he does in the above video, but also write them out in the description so people can go back and look at them again later.

Are you going to focus 100% on Ubuntu? Whether you do or not, you might want to include info on where to get help with specific problems on whichever distro you're talking about.
 
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Yippee38 said:
I'm pretty familiar with linux, and that was mind-boggling for me. WTF was he talking about?
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Not really sure what you mean. I saw both videos and technically they seemed solid and approachable to a person with my minimal knowledge of the Linux desktop. I think for newbies these videos could be daunting though. I think the general info was pretty good, maybe not the best or most entertaining presentation though.
 
I'm throwing down the gauntlet ;)

This is all in good fun, not meaning to be a dink here, just saying I think I can do a better job, so I'm gonna work on that and see what I can really do.

Also, I think you meant melodramatic?

wendell said:
Seems a bit melogramatic ;)

Part 1 of 4 follow-up is out, which is mainly about native gaming.
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1. I'm going to be focusing on Ubuntu to minimize variables.
2. I'm going to be making videos that demonstrate front to back how to get setup, in a very simple way, and some of the tricks I want to save as surprises. ;) I have a very particular method in mind here.
3. I do plan to have ways to address the desire to expand topic discussion, but I have some specific ways I want to do that, and I want it to be a bit of a surprise as to how I end up doing that.

Yippee38 said:
I'm pretty familiar with linux, and that was mind-boggling for me. WTF was he talking about?

Maybe start from scratch and assume zero knowledge. If you use terms or acronyms, talk about what they are, like he does in the above video, but also write them out in the description so people can go back and look at them again later.

Are you going to focus 100% on Ubuntu? Whether you do or not, you might want to include info on where to get help with specific problems on whichever distro you're talking about.
Click to expand...
 
Maybe because I’m familiar with Linux I didn’t have a big problem with the LTT video.

Ultimately a gaming guide for Linux isn’t ever really geared towards anyone that isn’t already somewhat Linux savvy.

I just don’t see any way to convert a longtime Windows gamer with any amount of “proper guiding”.
 
Sonicks said:
I just don’t see any way to convert a longtime Windows gamer with any amount of “proper guiding”.
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It's not so much a matter of conversion. It boils down to is it worth it or not. Last summer I used a guide from Phoronix and setup Steam VR with my Vive under Linux, a nerdy pursuit for even a place like this. It took me 15 minutes to get VR up and running under Windows 10 in December 2016. It took me around three hours under Ubuntu 17.04 last summer and it was clear that the state of Linux Steam VR was pretty bad. Things I would assume have improved but I've not seen much from the typical Linux fan sites about VR lately.

That's just where the state of PC gaming is today. Windows is utterly dominant and where the users are. I get that Linux fans who want to game or those that are dissatisfied with Windows 10 would like an alternative. But Windows is just vastly superior for gaming and there's just no simple guide that begins to close that gap for PC gamers who simply want to play games without who knows what kind of issues. That's going to take years of development effort.

That's not to say that there are no Linux games or that it's all painful. This with native support in my experience using Steam work pretty much the say way, download and play.
 
ooboontoo.........One day the love of linguistics and phonetics will carry over to the PC world
 
heatlesssun said:
Good luck! There's actually a fair amount of YT content on Linux gaming but there's always room for improvement and different angles. It's not so much that gaming on Linux is difficult, it's the lack of native content.
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Ya, much so this.

Honestly though, as someone that daily drives both linux and windows, I would like to see productivity apps running well on linux side. If Solidworks and Autocad worked on linux, given my extreme lack of gaming anyway, I wouldn't probably ever use a windows computer again.

Also, you could probably focus on the big mmo type of games first. PUGB/World of Warcraft etc. Diablo III on linux was always a pain because of the video artifacts and glitches.

You could also do some comparisons of native linux client to windows version on linux. Civ 5 has native linux client, and Civ 6 had a native planned. No idea if it's out yet or not.
 
KarsusTG said:
Also, you could probably focus on the big mmo type of games first. PUGB/World of Warcraft etc. Diablo III on linux was always a pain because of the video artifacts and glitches.
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I think this solid advice, concentrate on the big titles.

KarsusTG said:
You could also do some comparisons of native linux client to windows version on linux. Civ 5 has native linux client, and Civ 6 had a native planned. No idea if it's out yet or not.
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Civ VI is macOS and Linux compatible but I don't think the Linux version allows for cross platform MP but I think that's coming soon.
 
Almost got the steps figured out my first video. Sorry it's taking so long! I also had a very unffriendly motherboard over the weekend with a really shittily written BIOS, had to swap that for a completely different one, YUCK.
 
Okay, recording footage now, if I can keep my momentum, may get the Piloot episode out before end of weekend. We'll see ;)
 
Glad to hear you working on this endeavor! In all my reviews and discussions I include Linux support status and/or potential ease of play in WINE -ish programs etc, as well as note if a developer went above and beyond in any way. I endeavor to ensure that Linux gaming itself gets some visibility, that developers and publishers who do things well are rewarded with some PR, and show those who aren't yet on the bandwagon that there is viewership/players/money in doing so. The more quality Linux friendly content out there, the better!
 
So, FYI, I was tryinbg to get kdenlive to work well for me, and I've given up with it. I'm now going to try DaVinci Resolve, and so far, it looks like the tits. I'm sorry this is taking so long, getting my workflow going has a lot of up-front time cost, and so far it has taken a lot more than I originally intended just to get the pilot out. But I'm still hell bent to get this out! So, please stay tuned!

Here's why I have given up on kdenlive:
1. I use XFCE4 + Compiz as my main Desktop Environment/GUI. The deb version of kdenlive did not like this, and the flatpak (I think that's the version I tried, not snap) seemed okay with it. The issue was, pop-up interfaces didn't draw at all (eg. open file!).
2. I had to switch to another DE, so I used Enlightenment. And honestly, Enlightenment is awesome, but this interrupted my day to day workflow. I was able to put up with it for now, since Enlightenment is otherwise very nice, seriously, you should try it.
3. kdenlive out of the box _DOES NOT_ do any GPU offloading for rendering of the final encode. This is a pretty big deal since I'm on an i7-980x, and the extent of what I want to do, this will lead to very substantial render times. I had to follow a guide to take a modified version of ffmpeg with nvenc baked in, and re-configure kdenlive to use it (mostly pointing it to the modified versions, I didn't have to recompile code here). This _HELPED_, but my GPU utilisation peaked at 25% or so (GTX 960), and most of the time was like 10-15%. This was a tangible improvement, but quite annoying.
4. My renderings ended up producing black video anyways. I got audio, but black video, when I was using the source footage. Now, I know this was not due to #3's nvenc stuff, because when I used something called "proxy clips" when doing the final render (instead of the source files), it produced actual video footage, but it was lower fidelity due to the nature of proxy clips (this is working as intended).
5. In the end, I could not identify why I was getting black video in the output. So far as I could tell, I was using codecs and containers that were supported by kdenlive. This kind of an experience was unacceptable. It _should have just worked_, even if it wasn't 100% perfect from a resource utilization.
6. kdenlive crashes, often.

Now, DaVinci Resolve has a substantially more constrained codec and container compatibility list than kdenlive. But holy crap is it awesome so far. If it works out (so far looking good), I think I can do even more awesome shit than I was originally anticipating.

So, again, sorry this is taking so long. I want to make sure this is done very well, and as a reminder, _this is just the pilot episode I'm trying to put out here_.

Once I get a rough workflow going, this should be substantially faster turn-around. Starting is the hardest part.

Thank you for all the support so far peeps! :D
 
I'm actually making progress in DaVinci Resolve now! Got my recorded content converted to formats it likes, and starting to make actual content with it now. Not sure how long this part will take though! :D
 
Hey Folks!,

This is my pilot episode for my series on Gaming on Linux, and of course it's Overwatch!

If you have feedback to give, please leave it in the YouTube comments section.

This video took me about a month to make, as I had plenty of hiccups along the way. But this is an honest demonstration of Overwatch on Linux.

Hope it's helpful for you! Yay! :D
 
Comments:

  • Don't blur the gameplay during the intro. That drove me crazy. I kept trying to follow the game subconsciously.
  • 6 minutes of gameplay is WAY too much gameplay footage at the beginning. If you want to add it at the end, that's cool. At the beginning, you could be going through the intro with the gameplay running in the background (see above), then after the intro stuff, talk a bit about the performance perhaps, over the gameplay footage.
  • Put all commands in the notes below the video so they can be copied and pasted.
  • You should have notes for if you have an NVIDIA card.
  • It would be cool if rather than telling people to change DXVK to version 0.63, if you told them how to set it to the current version. Otherwise, this video becomes obsolete when a new version of DXVK comes out.
  • I liked the way you described the shader cache issue at the end. It would have been good if you explained the changes to the configuration when setting up the game (the lutris stuff).
 
First, if you could post your thoughts as comments on the YT video that'd be appreciated, as it helps indexing ;)

As for responding to your points...
  1. Curious effect, did not realise it would cause such a response. I'll have to keep that in mind, sorry!
  2. This didn't quite work out how I had in my head. I put it at the front because I wanted to show how good the gameplay was with the shader cache filled, and show it in a way that was raw, unedited. But this did not quite pan out as I had anticipated, whoops! Also, this was my first time using the editing tool, and there was a lot of learning in that process, so I could have done a better job there.
  3. Yeah, ran out of time here, I just wanted it posted, and this is one area I had to cut, but I know it should be added.
  4. I don't have a spare nVidia card on-hand, but I want to work on getting one and make nVidia centric videos too. The steps are different, so that's why I say AMD specifically.
  5. The footage was recorded about a month ago, due to how long it's been taken me to sort out my workflow stuff, this is simply a byproduct of that. I wanted to recommend a specific version that was _KNOWN WORKING_, instead of leave it as a blanket statement that could lead to unforeseen problems from buggy DXVK versions (accidental regressions happen). Also, I've been keeping up with the DXVK versions and there really isn't a lot of Overwatch-centric improvements since 0.63, so it's still a safe bet. It is not obsolete really.
  6. Explained the changes to the configuration when setting up the game, what exactly do you mean here? I believe I tried to do that. So, where do you think I fell short?

Thanks for the input! :D


Yippee38 said:
Comments:

  • Don't blur the gameplay during the intro. That drove me crazy. I kept trying to follow the game subconsciously.
  • 6 minutes of gameplay is WAY too much gameplay footage at the beginning. If you want to add it at the end, that's cool. At the beginning, you could be going through the intro with the gameplay running in the background (see above), then after the intro stuff, talk a bit about the performance perhaps, over the gameplay footage.
  • Put all commands in the notes below the video so they can be copied and pasted.
  • You should have notes for if you have an NVIDIA card.
  • It would be cool if rather than telling people to change DXVK to version 0.63, if you told them how to set it to the current version. Otherwise, this video becomes obsolete when a new version of DXVK comes out.
  • I liked the way you described the shader cache issue at the end. It would have been good if you explained the changes to the configuration when setting up the game (the lutris stuff).
Click to expand...
 
Adding to the stuff to put in the comments:

Links to everything you reference in the video and mention in the video that you did so ("link in the description"); for example, you mentioned in the video that one can follow ubuntu's instructions for creating a boot disk, so put the link to those instructions in there.
 
Agreed, unfortunately I ran out of time. Sorry about that! :(

Would you mind adding that comment on the YT comments please? :)

emphy said:
Adding to the stuff to put in the comments:

Links to everything you reference in the video and mention in the video that you did so ("link in the description"); for example, you mentioned in the video that one can follow ubuntu's instructions for creating a boot disk, so put the link to those instructions in there.
Click to expand...
 
Gonna start collecting notes so I can do a better job with remake of the first episode. Already recorded the footage, now to muster up the gusto to make it ;P

Oh, and re-record the audio too, I think I can do a better job there.

If there's any additional feedback you folks want to leave, do let me know and I may just incorporate it ;)
 
BloodyIron said:
Gonna start collecting notes so I can do a better job with remake of the first episode. Already recorded the footage, now to muster up the gusto to make it ;P

Oh, and re-record the audio too, I think I can do a better job there.

If there's any additional feedback you folks want to leave, do let me know and I may just incorporate it ;)
Click to expand...
Don't have any suggestions outside of what others have already mentioned, but I'm looking forward to your next video/remake
 
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